YouTube - The Missing Person Pre-Roll

Throughout my childhood, missing persons were prominently featured on the side of milk cartons (if you're not familiar with this phenomenon, Slate has a good background article here).  It's only natural that the hunt for missing persons should be updated for the digital age, specifically YouTube.  For missing persons week the Australian Federal police and VML Australia developed a Missing Persons pre-roll ad.  The ads featured missing persons in Australia and were geo-targeted to focus on the specific location that each person was last seen.  Additionally, they modified the typical 'skip' button to allow the user to select 'Yes I have' or 'No I haven't' seen this person.

While no missing persons were found, it's a wonderful idea particularly when it comes to finding missing children as YouTube is the perfect media platform when trying to reach the younger demographic (who spend a tremendous amount of time on YouTube).  If I'm honest, the modification of the 'skip' button seems gratuitous as you could simply include a call to action to click on the video if you've seen the missing person.  In any case it's a smart use of media and something I hope will be used more widely.  Check out the case study video below.

Posted by: Reuben Halper

Forget Cats, Chickens Are The New Heroes Of The Internet - Mercedes, LG & Foster Farms

Conventional wisdom says that the Internet is dominated by cat videos (if you haven't seen the hilarious video from agency john st. on 'catvertising' then stop what you're doing and watch it here).  However, the past month has seen the unlikely emergence of chickens playing a starring role in several campaigns.

The first example comes from Mercedes.  The 'Magic Body Control' commercial was created by Jung Von Matt to demonstrate the stability and comfort of the intelligent drive system.  How ironic that  they use a $5 chicken to demonstrate the capabilities of a $50,000 car.  Check it out below:


Similarly, LG and their agency SuperHeroes are using chickens to show off the new optical stabilization features of the LG G2 phone.


Last but not least, Foster Farms are combining chicken puppets and classic 1980s songs to demonstrate the 'amazing' chicken that Foster Farms brings to the table.

Abercrombie & Fitch - What Does The Fox Say?

A few summers ago Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe' was the hit of the summer.  The song began trending in large part because Justin Bieber uploaded a video of him lip syncing to the song.  That kicked off a trend of thousands of people creating 'Call Me Maybe' lip sync videos with everyone from the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders to Jimmy Fallon getting in on the act.  Several brands also created their own, with Abercrombie & Fitch creating the most popular branded version.  The video (20 million views to date) featured various half-naked Abercrombie models from cities around the world.  Eight months later, Abercrombie decided to also jump on board the Harlem Shake meme and create an Abercrombie & Fitch Harlem Shake video, though they were a bit late to the game and the video only garned 200k views.

Memejacking now seems to be a bona fide part of their content strategy as they've also jumped on the What Does The Fox Say? trend by creating their own version of the song featuring Abercrombie models.  It's a smart strategy as they can pretty much guarantee an audience by piggybacking on whatever is trending and inserting half-naked models into the equation.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Other Things I Like But Don't Have Time To Write Up - Steinlager, VW, MTN

Steinlager - Be The Artist, Not The Canvas
I love this ad from Steinlager to promote responsible drinking.  Rather than tap into the typical cliches around responsible drinking, it appeals the juvenile, yet common occurrence that can happen when young men get too hammered.


VW - Take On Me
I'm blown away that Take On Me hasn't been used in an Ad before.  VW remakes the classic song to promote their no-charge scheduled maintenance on every new VW.

MTN - The Everywhere Library
Another great example of a brand doing good, in this case the Telco MTN brings books to students across Africa via SMS.


Posted by: Reuben Halper


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Google - Hangout Comedy Club

Google has partnered with UK charity, Comic Relief, to bring viewers around the world closer to the famed Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  Every year hundreds of musicians and comedians flock to Edinburgh for a chance at their big break, while thousands of fans come to see their favorite acts or the next big thing.  Gigs take place in small venues across the city during the festival, but now a selection of those acts are breaking the digital fourth wall through via the Hangout Comedy Club.  As the official Google blog post describes:

To be part of the Hangout Comedy Club, simply join a Google+ Hangout hosted by one of our famous comedians, including Katherine Ryan, Sanderson Jones and Joey Page. Just like a real comedy club, if you’re brave enough, you can join the front row with up to eight others. If you’d rather sit out of sight, join a Hangout, add your friends, and watch from the safety of the back row.

As in real-life, participants in the front row can heckle the comedians or (and perhaps more likely) become the object of the ridicule from whomever is on stage. [brief aside: is it harder for the comedians to make fun of people when they can't see their whole outfit or make fun of their date?]

Those people in the back row will have the opportunity to use the 'Laugh-O-Meter' which uses face tracking technology to measure how much you're smiling or laughing throughout the set.  Based on the laugh-o-meter score, it will then suggest a donation amount (higher if you laughed heartily) with all proceeds going to the Comic Relief charity.

It's another wonderful example of using technology to bridge the gap between the real and digital worlds.  Check out the intro video below or head on over to Hangout Comedy Club to see the schedule of upcoming events.


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Intel/Toshiba - The Power Inside

Last year I wrote about The Beauty Inside a campaign from Intel & Toshiba which went on to win both an Emmy as well as three Grand Prix's in Cannes (including Branded Content) this year.  Pereira & O'Dell are back with 'The Power Inside,' which is the third iteration of the social/interactive film series.  As in previous years, the film is directed and stars various Hollywood heavyweights.  The first episode launched August 15th with new episodes released weekly for the next month and a half.  The key aspect is the participatory nature of the film which allows viewers to be featured in the episodes through various mechanisms such as uploading photos of videos of themselves.

This year's iteration takes a more comedic approach (as opposed to the emotional and earnest 'The Beauty Inside' and the original horror-based 'Inside.').  The premise is that an alien race of extraterrestrial moustaches and unibrows are attempting to take over the upper lips and eyes of people around the world. The main character is Neil, who together with his friends and the help of technology discovers his inner strength to defeat the moustache and unibrow invaders called Uricks.  It's very much in the tone of Zombieland or Shaun Of The Dead.  Ridiculous? Yes, but also very well written, shot and produced.

In an interesting twist, AdWeek reports that Intel & Toshiba are selling product placement within the films to additional advertisers: 'Spotify, Skype, Fossil watches and Skullcandy headphones are all paying for placements with merchandise rather than cash. The merchandise will be given to winners in weekly contests tied to the series and as giveaways when U.S. consumers buy a Toshiba laptop computer promoted by the series.' 

I've never heard of such a thing being done before (at least in terms of branded content) but it's a clever way for a brand to leverage the previous success in order to offset the costs of the current campaign.  Check out the trailer and episodes in the playlist below.

Posted by: Reuben Halper

Coca-Cola - Personal Road

Back in 2011 Coca-Cola launched the incredible 'Share A Coke' campaign in Australia.  The campaign saw Coca-Cola print 150 of the country’s most popular names on labels of Coke bottles for the first time in the brand’s history.  The idea was to give people a reason to connect with friends through a Coke and by every measure was a huge success.  Since then Coca-Cola has been rolling out the campaign across the world, recently launching Israel where Coke & Gefen Team took the idea of personalization a step further.  They transformed the a series of prominent billboards into interactive displays.  Consumers were asked to download the Coca-Cola smartphone app and enter their name.  The app would then transmit and display their name on the billboard whenever they were in range (using geo-fence technology).  The app would then notify the user when their name was being displayed.

I would normally write this off as a gimmick with too many barriers to entry to get traction amongst users, but one shouldn't underestimate the narcissistic nature of today's smartphone user and their desire to see their name up in lights.  The app ranked #1 in Israel's app store and was downloaded over 100k times.  It's a cool idea and a wonderful execution, but also somewhat creepy.  Is this the first step on the road to the dystopian personalized advertising as imagined in Minority Report?  Check out the case study video below.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Interrail Mobile - Global Pass

A generation ago backpacking around Europe was a rite of passage for college-age youth with a little bit of money to spare.  While the center of gravity for the backpacking experience has moved to SE Asia, training it around Europe for a summer or for a few weeks at a time is still a popular travel experience.  In order to promote their European wide unlimited train ticket, Interrail and Havas have created a fantastic piece of utility for their customers.  Interrail have partnered with mobile operators around Europe to provide a SIM card that allows travelers to use data and make cheap calls regardless of what country they are in for the duration of their travels.  The aptly named Interrail Mobile is sold directly on the Interrail site and provides an invaluable service to their youth-oriented market; the ability to stay in touch and post updates to their social networks throughout their travels.

Giving their customers a cheap and easy way to stay connected to social media and document their journey not only eliminates a huge paint point for travelers, but also allows Interrail to leverage word of mouth among their customers in order to drive future bookings from their respective social networks.   Check out the overview video below or check out the more in-depth article/interview at Contagious Magazine.




Posted by: Reuben Halper

Bear Time Stories

Perhaps my hard heart has grown softer since having a child, but I seriously was blown away by this idea.  Bear Time Stories is a project which:  'allows you to record yourself reading out a bedtime story. Your story will be put on a mp3 player built into a stuffed animal and given to parentless children around the world...
...Using voices from around the world the Bear-Time Project hopes to show how by donating a voice we can all help to make a child's dreams a little sweeter.'

Check out the overview video below and then head on over to Bear Time Stories to donate your voice or just your $$$.
via: Leon Bayliss


Posted by: Reuben Halper

IKEA - 2014 Augmented Reality Catalog

A few years back it seemed like augmented reality was going to be the NEXT BIG THING.  Reality has since intervened as most augmented reality executions proved to be mainly gimmicks that didn't provide a particularly compelling experience nor did they provide true utility to consumers.  Now IKEA is showing how augmented reality can be truly useful through their 2014 augmented reality catalog.  Created by McCann and IKEA's in-house agency, Icom the app allows IKEA customers to preview items from the catalog to see how they'd look in their homes prior to purchase.

Here's how it works, a user places the 2014 IKEA catalog on the floor in their home and then fires up the app on their phone or tablet.  The mobile device recognizes the tablet as the augmented reality marker.  The user can then select from various items in the catalog where they are overlaid onto a real-time view of the room (as captured through the camera of the mobile device).

Again, this is a great use of technology in order to provide true utility to the customer.  Users can see how various colors would look in-situ, as well as getting a sense of the size/scale of the furniture within their homes.  Those two features alone ease two of the most common pain points when buying furniture (eg. will color x good? will it fit properly?).  In fact, IKEA developed this app after their research showed that 1 in 7 customers purchased items that were either too large or too small for their homes.  It's a win-win as the app also has the potential to reduce the amount of store returns.  Check out the video that demonstrates the app below (complete with slightly creepy Swedish guy):





Posted by: Reuben Halper